Noah Makes His First Friends

I think that I may be getting old because I slept in until 8am this morning.  Normally each year, we arrive and unpack on Day #1 and then are ready to start working on Day #2.  Usually Emmanuel allows volunteers a day to rest and get acclimated, but I've chosen not to do that because there'd be that chance that I would dwell on how much I miss home...so I choose to get right to work!  This morning I was exhausted - I'm sure from the packing and from having 2 children along with me, one who is completely new to Emmanuel.  We showered and then headed down to the tienda to grab a bite to eat.  I chatted with Andi about our responsibilities, but she said to enjoy today and Sunday and she'd get back to me on Monday.

I wanted to use today to show Noah around Emmanuel, so that he would have an idea of what is where.  We began by heading into the 'Boys Area'.  I pointed out the big boys'  buildings, the grandecitos building, the small boys' building and then we saw Invisible (Pamela) who I've know the 9 years I've been here.  She told me that she works in the medium boys' building (11-12 year olds, the same age as Noah) and that the boys were about to watch The Croods together.  Noah was more than welcome to watch the movie with them.  At this time, Alina decided to head to the Toddler House since girls shouldn't be spending this much time amongst the boys.  We went in and Noah sat on the floor with the boys to watch the movie.  He sat with two boys named Sergio and Gerson and quickly became friends.  When the movie was over, they put another movie in but it was time for us to keep walking to show Noah more of the orphanage.  I pointed out the dental clinic and then we headed up to the power toddler house.  Jeremias saw me right away and came running.  Noah played with a few boys, but heavy rain came in quickly so we had to head under the porch to stay dry.  One of the men in charge brought these cute frog rain jackets out for the boys to wear to the dining hall.  I would have liked to get a picture of this, but I left my camera back in our room.  We walked with the power toddlers to the dining hall, and I saw Luis David sitting with Bayron...it is how his job to look after Bayron, so I went over with Noah to say 'Hi' and asked if Noah could sit with him during the lunch.

After lunch we headed to the farm so that I could show Noah around.  I showed him the chicken coops and the horses, the tilapia farm and the greenhouses.  When we walked up to where the goats and pigs were, it didn't sound & smell like they had pigs this year.  We didn't see any goats either, but we did see 2 dogs in the pen where the goats normally are.  We walked around to where the cows are kept, but they were out grazing (we had seen them earlier).

When we got back to our room to wait for Alina, Noah and I played a few games of Connect 4.  It had been a while since I've played that game (middle school perhaps?), so we ended with him having won 3 games and I won only 2.  I had purchased a few games from the Dollar Tree prior to leaving the USA - Connect 4, a deck of cards, tic-tac-toe, dominoes, checkers, and a basketball game.  These will be taking the place of electronics this year since I've found the past few years with Alina that having a Nintendo DS around minimizes her desire to interact with others.  We'll see how these games work.

While we were waiting for Alina, Noah also pumped up the 2 basketballs so that he could dribble them back and forth from the tienda, to work on his ball-handling skills.  When Alina came back to the room we headed down to the tienda to have some supper with the basketballs.  Alina, who had initially said that she didn't need a basketball in Honduras, was more than willing to take 'her ball' and dribble it all the way to the tienda.  They were serving sandwiches made of tuna, chicken slices, lettuce, tomato, and cheese with 3 pieces of bread (stacked kind of like a Big Mac).  The plate also had french fries on it.  Noah had a whole sandwich, whereas Alina and I shared a sandwich because our goal is for him not to lose any weight down here.

When they were finished with their plates, I treated them to an ice cream treat.  The tienda no longer has buckets of ice cream as they did in the past, so Noah will not be able to try the ice cream.  But rather, they are now serving frozen snacks, along the lines of when the ice cream truck comes by...ice cream sandwiches, popsicles, different ice creams on a stick, etc.

Reinita came over to the tienda and chatted with us.  We found out that she makes all of the food for the tienda, so we told her the sandwiches were absolutely delicious (as were the burritos this morning).  She and a few other girls from the tienda played a little bit of basketball (more of the keep-away type) with Alina and Noah when they finished eating.

Alina and Noah with their basketballs at the fountain in front of the church

Noah and Doris playing keep-away in front of the tienda

Alina in front of the tienda

When the tienda closed, we headed back to our room.  The medium girls were showering and getting ready to settle down for the night.  I chatted with Michell a little bit and Alina headed into the medium girls house to spend time with them.  I looked down to the soccer court at the school and saw the 2nd medium girls house down there playing a game of soccer.  Since Noah couldn't go INTO the medium girls house, I went with him down to the court and we saw David (Veronica's son who is more or less Noah's age and speaks a little English).  A few years back when I first met him, he told me he preferred to be called Messi - since that was his favorite professional soccer player.  I asked if Noah could get in on their game and they accepted him right away.  He even scored a GOAL!!!

When the soccer game ended, we headed back to our room where Noah and Alina played a few games of Connect 4 and then we played a few card games (golf, kings in the corner, crazy 8) before heading to bed.  What a wonderful 2nd day!

Noah and Alina playing Connect 4 before bedtime

Honduras 2016

This is it!!!  Today is the day!  I've been waiting for this moment all summer...mostly all of last school year too!...the day we leave for our month-long stay at Orphanage Emmanuel in Guaimaca, Honduras.

Since we still had a bit of last minute items to do, I woke up at 2am to take care of last minute packing, weighing and re-weighing the suitcases, sending items from one suitcase to another, trying to get them as close to 50 pounds each as possible (we later found out at the airport that 1 was at 50 pounds, and the other two were at 49 pounds).  I took care of some last minute financials and left a special note for my daughter Kaylyn in our Mommy-Daughter journal under her pillow (hoping she finds it soon).

Bob woke up just before 4am (on his own!) to take us to the airport.  Normally it's extremely difficult for him to wake up on time, so I'm not sure if that's because he was eager to see us go or if he got that bad of a night's sleep worrying about us and our trip.  We got to the airport around 4:30am for our 5:45am departure, checked in, said our goodbyes to Bob and headed through security.  He waited for us to get all the way through security before heading back home.  I kept him up-to-date with each part of our travel process, to try to ease his worries (pre-1st flight, our layover in Atlanta, our arrival in Tegucigalpa, and reassurance that Norman WAS at the airport to take us to the orphanage).  Noah called Bob later that evening as well with all of the news of the day.

Leaving Appleton - Noah is such a jokster!

Our layover in Atlanta - we had enough time for the kiddos to fill their stomachs.

Noah pointing to the plane that would be taking us into Honduras

Noah's comments while our plane landed in Tegucigalpa were priceless.  First he noted that the plane is putting on its brakes awfully hard, and then he looked around at the streets outside the airport and said that he didn't realize that "all the signs would be in Spanish too!"  He was talking about store signs and billboards.

Our arrival into Tegucigalpa went well.  Norman met us as we exited the final security checkpoint and asked us to wait for some other passengers that would be riding along with us.  As we waited, I purchased the standard basic phone I usually get (since I left my phone with Doris last year) as well as an extra chip for my USB modem so that I can post these blogs for you (and for me to reflect back on as years go on).

When we arrived at Orphanage Emmanuel, the girls were just finishing up cleaning our room...and it was girls we knew very well.  I let Alina get out of the van, and they got SO excited, shouting, "Alina! Alina!"  When we got everything moved into our room, we headed to the big girls' yard to see Doris, then to the tienda to pick up a beverage and some chips, then to the Toddler house.  Noah and Alina played with the toddlers for a bit before it was time to walk them to supper.  They now eat at the big dining hall with the older children as well.  We saw Michell in the dining hall and said 'hi' to her.  After supper, we headed back to our room so that we could unpack a little and Noah could call Bob, to let him know how Day #1 went.  While calling home, Michell (who is in the medium girls' house right next to us) came over as well as Lilian and Doris.  We chatted a bit while things were settling down and the medium girls were getting ready for bed for the evening.  When we went back in our room and locked up, I explained closing the windows and curtains to Noah and why we do it (to prevent bugs from crawling into the room in the middle of the night), and a gecko came out from behind the curtain, so Noah got to see his FIRST gecko.  He heard them a little bit later in the evening.

We had purchased a few games from the Dollar Tree to keep us occupied when the children are locked in for the evening (door-locking is an absolute necessity for safety in countries like this).  Alina, Noah and I played two card games of golf (Grandma Wendt would be proud), but because we were super-exhausted, we went to bed right after that.